I think that we're seeing the last death rattles of a completely broken & inefficient educational system. Education is now one of the least "productive" areas of the economy, in the sense that the number of person-hours to successfully educate someone has not improved at all, when almost every other sector of the economy has had dramatic productivity increases. Paying people more, when they aren't more productive, is called "inflation", and isn't sustainable. The best/only hope for improved productivity in education is the computer/internet. MIT and others are putting much of their curriculum online _for free_, and eventually smart high school students will be able to learn from the best & brightest on the planet. We may finally be able to approximate the advantage that Alexander the Great had, when he had the best and brightest as his personal tutors. Humans are born to learn, and anyone who has been around small children know this. It takes the combined might of the educational establishment to kill this interest. If we can allow children access to the wisdom of the world via the internet as soon as they can speak and read, we might be able to marginalize the deleterious effects of the current school systems. When I was growing up in the late 1950's and early 1960's, I found the library to be the most liberating place I had ever discovered. When I broke my arm in the 5th grade and couldn't do recess, I was allowed to take all my recesses in the library. I was able to read a significant fraction of the books in that library during those wonderful 6 weeks. Later, at my older sister's high school library, I discovered science books about how rockets & missiles really worked, and started comparing the specific impulse of various types of rocket fuel. We started a rocket club, and built a number of rockets while still in the 6th grade. Needless to say, we learned more math & science in those few hours after school, then the entire rest of the curriculum. The computer & internet have the capability to go far beyond the library in its ability to engage & challenge children. I just wish that Feynmann had the internet at his disposal when he did his famous lectures. Perhaps someone of Feynmann's caliber is (or soon will be) working on a similar project. At 03:20 AM 5/10/03 EDT, asimovd@aol.com wrote:

As for public education -- I'm a liberal myself. Anyone who argues that compulsory public education is the answer to the U.S.'s education problems -- when public education is failing so miserably right now -- is out of their mind.

I would argue, however, that the minuscule money that's allocated for teachers' salaries (attracting only those who can't get a more lucrative job elsewhere) and educational materials, and the massively unpleasant discipline problems that public school teachers have to often deal with, are significant reasons that public education is failing so egregiously.

I really don't know what the root of the problem is. I went to a lower-middle-class elementary school with 40+ students per class and mostly dedicated teachers, and most kids there got a reasonable education from that school. Later I went to a middle-middle-class high school and most kids got a reasonable education that way, too (class of '64). My feeling is that my experience was typical for that era; what's changed in the last 40 years to vastly lower the quality of public education, I really can't say.

I *do* agree that home schooling makes more and more sense these days -- to avoid the colossally nasty behavior of the bullies and the cliquies, the mind-numbing boredom that smart kids (and probably most others) have to endure in the classroom, and the poorly trained teachers who barely know their subject matter, not to mention how to teach. (Note the huge resistance teachers' unions have mounted against proposals that all public school teachers pass a minimum competency exam in many states.)

I would love to run a school for gifted kids, giving them all the things I wish I'd had in school but never came close to until going to college. (My model is the most memorable book I read as a child, "Children of the Atom" by Wilmar Shiras. Anyone else read that?)

--Dan